The Corax Speaks

And speaks and speaks and speaks. Hard to shut me up, really. Here you'll find a collection of things that I find hilarious, poignant, and inspiring. In addition to shiny things that I find. And I'm sure I'll wind up posting some of my own musings at some point as well.

[tricktster]

I ever tell you guys about my ethically dubious radio show back in college? The Mad Dad Hour?

[tricktster]

it was an entire radio show built around perpetuating a very simple joke, but it was uniquely powerful in its capacity to prompt the reaction I was looking for.

so my slot was at the tail end of rush hour, and i got a fair number of listeners/callers who were on the way home from the office. And like, I had a lot of callers, who almost all wanted to request songs that really didn’t fit with the aesthetic. I had pitched a power pop show when i got my slot, but the callers were not having it; they invariably wanted classic rock.

this made sense in a way. if you think about the demographics of the people who listened to the radio for music in 2010 instead of their ipods or cds or whatever, you’d expect them to skew older right? accordingly, i quickly realized that almost all of the people who called to request songs were Dads of a Certain Age. It was honestly annoying at first - I’m all for most classic rock, but that wasn’t what the show was supposed to be.

And so one day, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with requests that just didn’t fit thematically, i came up with the joke that rapidly became the only reason I kept the show going. Per station rules, I had to play a certain number of pre-recorded PSAs during my show, and before I cut to one I was supposed to read out the song titles and artists for all the music i had played before the break. So this one day when i had to inform the world before the break that the song they just heard was, per a listener’s request, Hey Jude by the Beatles, I decided to do a goof. I said:

“and finally, that last song you heard was Hey Jude, which was of course written and performed by the Rolling Stones.”

I barely had time to get the ads going before the phone started ringing. See, I had been assuming people would realize i was making an obvious joke by claiming one of the most well-known Beatles tracks was a Stones song, but i had failed to consider that my listeners were mostly 55-70 year old dads who were irritated from a long day in the office.

And when those dads heard me, a millennial woman, get the artist of an extremely well-known beatles song WRONG???!

they HAD to call in to correct my ignorance. never in a polite way either, it was condescending and annoyed or nothing. and like, they were just SO personally insulted by my inaccurate reporting that it took a massive amount of effort for me to avoid cracking up during the call. I had never understood why some people would enjoy trolling random strangers on the internet before, but in that moment, I understood the appeal entirely.

obviously i did it again right before the next commercial break, immediately after playing Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen David Bowie.

the phone immediately began to ring.

“ARE YOU AN IDIOT?” one of the callers began, “DAVID BOWIE???? THAT WAS QUEEN!”

“I thought David Bowie was the lead singer of Queen though?” I replied with as much innocent earnestness as i could conjure.

I could hear an intake of breath as the infuriated boomer on the other end of the line struggled to figure out where to even start.

And thus, the Mad Dad Hour was born.

[tricktster]

@eduards-stuff I kept doing the same joke for an hour a week for an entire year, and the dads NEVER caught on. After episode 1 of the new format I started taking the angry dad calls on air, which added another layer of hilarity to the whole concept.

My friends on campus knew that hay I was doing and enjoyed tuning in, but only one actual listener ever figured out what I was doing, and he was literally a random 30 year old guy from the netherlands with access to an early internet connection radio service. He was possibly my only actual fan. I only know about him because he went to the effort of making a skype and paying for international service so he could call in, and while I got a few calls from him, the first remains my favorite:

me: hi there, you’ve got TST-

him: *strained, wheezing dutch laughter*

me: hey, is everything o-

him: pfffHAHAHAAH YOU MAKE THEM SO MAD. THEY THINK SO LITTLE OF YOUUUUUUUU BUT THE MEN ARE THE ONES WHO ARE FOOLISH! HA! HA! HA! YOU HAVE DUPED THEM!

me: sir i do not know you and i have never even seen you but i am in romantic love with you.

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[coffeebeanwriting]

How To Avoid Plot Armor

Plot armor is when important characters seem to survive each and every treacherous obstacle that is thrown their way just for the sake of the plot. The readers know that your protagonist is important and won’t meet their demise because who else will defeat the bad guy in the end? This can result in underwhelming battle scenes, loss of suspense and an overall boring experience.

Here are some ways to avoid having your readers notice the plot armor (because let’s be honest, it’s there whether we like or not) or at least make it more realistic:

1) Injure your characters. Let it be known that no one is safe. During the heat of battle, the prized soldier loses his sword arm. The invincible superhero receives PTSD after witnessing a terrible event. Raise the stakes!

2) If they escape, make it believable. Did they sacrifice something to escape? Did a past experience give them the wits and knowledge to outsmart the danger? Justify your protagonist’s escape. Don’t make it an easy get away just because you need them out of the situation. 

3) There are consequences. Every action sparks a reaction. Have there be realistic push back. Your character shouldn’t be immune to the rules and laws of your world.

4) Detailed Explanations. So, your character needs their limbs, their sanity and anything else you could strip them of. How do you make it seem like they’re not immune to everything then? Equip them with what they need (knowledge, weapon, confidence, etc) and really sell it to your reader on how they survived. 

There’s no way a teenaged girl stakes a 400 year old vampire just by picking up a branch and defending herself. Equip her with some knowledge of vampires (fanfics to the rescue?), an ancient relic that she unknowingly wears around her neck and an insane amount of adrenaline… and maybe I’ll believe it.

5) Kill off other characters. Have their deaths affect the protagonist.

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting

📖 ☕ Official Blog: www.byzoemay.com

[87-pounds-deactivated20160310]

my sense of humor: getting birthday cards with the wildly incorrect age on it for people

[magicoftelevision]

[thebagelhut]

I see this and raise you: getting cards for a wildly different occasion and customizing them to fit the holiday you need

[motherhenna]

[discount-butlins]

[oakh4rt]

throwback to the time my partner put in his 2 week notice with a birthday card for a 2 year old

[silly-slacker-person]

King

[kkshowtunes]

Once I got a card that said “BEST GREAT GRANPA EVER!!”

I’m a teenager

[unscharf-an-den-raendern]

[consentcactus]

[theroguefeminist]

Just goes to show the companies complying in advance to the current administration are CHOOSING to do so and the decent ones AREN'T

[rvllybllply2014]

The fact that this is 80 fucking years ago but still just as relevant is terrifying.

[cerastes]

Did I ever tell you how I got kicked from Chess club back in school?

[cerastes]

Ok, so, as I’ve mentioned occasionally, I used to also be in the school theater troupe, and for a role, I learned basic sleight of hand, the kind magicians use for such stunts like card tricks and ball tricks. Mind you, I wasn’t doing Criss Angel Mindfreak levels of shit or redefining the capital H in Houdini, but I knew how to do basic sleight of hand with small objects, which I used for party tricks and other such parlor tomfoolery.

But I realized I wasn’t using my newfound power to its full extent, so I got an idea one day. I arrived early to the chess clubroom and pocketed a few extra pieces from the other chessboards (which didn’t matter, the club never had enough members to actually use all of the chessboards at any one time), then I challenged the club prez to a game. Now, this guy already didn’t like me too much, dude was kind of a cunt and held a grudge against me because my cousin ended up with one of his crushes and then I ended up with his next crush, so he had bloodline beef with us. So he accepts to the match and we set up the board.

Now, this guy was pretty good at chess, objectively better than myself, but I wasn’t here to win, not at the game, at least. We start playing, it starts pretty even as we develop our units, he castles better and faster than I, and then starts putting pressure on me. It’s at this point, the midgame, where my Belmont to his Dracula would shine in full force: Whenever he looked away (to answer someone’s question about where to find something or about some chess rule), I would put One (1) pawn down from my sleeve. 

Initially he didn’t notice, but he did look twice at some placements. But as time went on, he started to visibly grow frustrated and confused, until it became so fucking ridiculous and obvious that he called a pause and counted a total of 14 black pawns on the board (you only have 8 pawns, for reference), at which point I couldn’t hold my laughter anymore. He starts insulting me, I look behind him, to the door, and pretend I’m addressing a teacher that had just come into the room, he turns around, sees no one had actually entered the room, and when he looks back at me and the board, there was suddenly a second black queen next to his king and I just fucking lose it when he makes one of the faces of all time and starts saying colorful things about mine mother.

Anyways I got banned from Chess club after that but it was worth it.

[kingwizardandthelizardgizza-blog]

Douglas Adams is the best when it comes to describe characters

[quasarkisses]

they need to teach classes on Douglas Adams analogies okay

“He leant tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis.”

“Stones, then rocks, then boulders which pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much, much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you.”

“He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.”

“It looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.”

“If it was an emotion, it was a totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not as a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly - again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across a motorway is deadly.”

[nudityandnerdery]

And, of course: “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

[assassinregrets]

the one that will always stay with me is “Arthur Dent was grappling with his consciousness the way one grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath,” i feel like that was the first time i really understood what you could do with words.

[marsdaydream]

I will reblog this every time I see it because these are some of my favorite sentences in the English language.

[hellenhighwater]

Gonna get myself a fun little surprise I guess

[hellenhighwater]

This is better than I'd ever hoped for, I bet a rat could kill you with that thing by firing a laser back in time and electrocuting your grandfather

Just look at this thing

[hellenhighwater]

The rat gun is hereeeeee!

[hellenhighwater]

This is getting notes again so I will admit that "rat gun" was an autocorrect error and it was supposed to be "ray gun."

But it'll always be a rat gun to me.

[hellenhighwater]

The most expensive thing in these pictures was the cat, and he was $60.

[hellenhighwater]

I'll be honest--I forgot that the pump organ desk/bar was visible in the background, and it was NOT under $60.

It was actually $75.

The chairs, however, were paid for in human life. I inherited them; they were originally my great grandmother's. But they're not particularly rare-- you can find these exact chairs without a lot of effort, in reasonable shape, for not that much money. They made a lot of them.

[theworsethingsgettheharderifight]

your gazelle has a pearl choker

[hellenhighwater]

That's Hadrian. He's a bush buck and he loves fashion.

[hellenhighwater]

Hi you asked this question and I immediately went to the pottery studio to make a calcifer to put in my woodstove.

Will update if he survives the kiln.

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

i am still on tenterhooks vis a vis calcifer 🥺🥺🥺

[hellenhighwater]

I just brought him home from the pottery studio and wired him for light. He lives!!!!!

[thebisexualwreckoning]

OP just wondering do you like have the closet to Narnia tucked in there somewhere?

[hellenhighwater]

Dude, c'mon, these things take time.

Give me a couple hours.

[hellenhighwater]

Okay!! We have doordrobe! It's not quite done but after nearly turning myself into an hellpancake while carrying this in from the garage to the house, I feel like I should call it a night.

Right now it's not going into a secret room (but the Angel of Death (And WiFi) behind it does have a secret compartment for my router? Does that count) but Malice and Vice are still exploring it like it's a whole new world.

The House of Horrors continues to be...well, exactly what it is.

[hellenhighwater]

Oh, no, all radioactive materials go in The Box.

[copp3rtop]

please explain. Do you actually have a lead lined box for radioactive objects, or are you just talking about the router behind the painting?

[hellenhighwater]

The Box.

[hellenhighwater]

Not people's teeth, no.

[chaoticgremlinmakingart]

Holy shit. This just keeps getting better and better. Absolutely marvelous house. What other treasures do you have in that house?

[hellenhighwater]

I recently got some very silly dishes and a telescope!

[hellenhighwater]

All of these accusations of witchcraft! As if the vibe in this house could be any more clearly Artificer.

[maximumzombiecreator]

On the subject of TPKs and failure in TTRPGs, I gotta say, I love a good mechanic for losing.

I love that Fate gives you metacurrency for conceding a scene, and I love that taking extreme consequences creates a new aspect for your character.

I love that when you die in Blades of the Dark, if you're still attached to the character, you can just become a ghost.

I love that in Monster of the Week, when you need to avoid harm it costs a point of luck, which triggers a character-specific consequence and lets you see when your character's luck is literally going to run out.

I even love that in Cyberpunk they've created an omnipresent group of amoral, heavily armed paramedics, so no matter where your character gets gunned down, there's always a chance of pulling through.

Basically, any game that is set up so that losing is going to make things more interesting, not less, is a game that's going to help great stories happen at the table, and I love that.

[unexplained-events]

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

[smileforthehigh-deactivated2017]

Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)

[desiremyblack]

(via TumbleOn)

[pearlsnapbutton]

What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”

[kiwianaroha]

Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it

And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video

[theopensea]

Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.

[thegirlthewolfate]

Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.

Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/

Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄

[archaeologistforhire]

Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year. 

“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.

In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.

“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut

“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”

Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.

“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/sammy-kogvik-hms-terror-franklin-1.3763653

[crazythingsfromhistory]

Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.

Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.

[fluffmugger]

oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age

it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.  

Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with  the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians.  So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least

[secondlina]

Here is “Knot”, a short comic I drew to sell at Mocca and TCAF this year. The printed version is going to be SO PRETTY. I’m in love with the cover (which I will post later).

I just wanted to do something fairy-tale-like that talked about doubts and frustrations and how to deal with them. I’m really happy with how colorful and adorable the story turned out to be. 

If you enjoyed “Knot”, please consider reblogging it and/or checking out my ongoing webcomic Namesake! HUGS TO ALL OF YOU!

[claypigeonpottery]

I truly sacrificed to create this ridiculous mug. biting clay is a bad sensory experience 😔 who would have guessed

I’m tempted not to glaze the bite marks so it looks like it was bitten through the glaze lmao

[raychleadele]

I showed this to my husband and he said he wants four mugs like this in various states of eaten, so he can swap when no one’s looking and make it look like he’s actually eating it.

[tarisilmarwen]

I just love how… messy Rebellion Era Jedi are.

Half of them are traumatized survivors of Order 66, trying to cope with the near-total violent eradication of their home, their friends, and everything they ever knew, often in unhealthy ways.  (Cere cut herself off from the Force, Caleb changed his name, buried his identity, and turned to drinking, Cal suppressed his Force abilities so badly he had to relearn all of them.)  Most of them were children when the Order fell, far too young to have everything ripped away from them, half-trained and frightened and constantly on the run.  Running away from the pain, from the trauma, from who they are.  Moving from place to place, trying to find somewhere, some safe haven, some remnant left of the Jedi Order, someone they can trust, who still remembers the Jedi as they are and not who the Empire has decreed them to be.

The older ones didn’t escape the trauma either; they had spent their entire lives as Jedi and now suddenly everything was gone and everyone was dead and they could no longer practice their culture or beliefs for fear of discovery, they had to take everything they knew and go underground, hiding who they were and escaping to preserve what remnants of their Order remained.  (Jocasta desperately trying to save and protect the gathered knowledge in the Archives and libraries, Obi-Wan and Yoda forced into isolation and hermitage with nothing but the Force and their memories.)

Imagine the constant fear and paranoia they must have felt.  Can this person or this person be trusted?  If their secret is revealed, will they be ratted out?  Rejected?  Cast aside like vagrants or turned over to the Empire relentlessly hunting them down for crimes they didn’t commit?  After all if the clones could betray them—their closest friends and brothers-in-arms, that they fought alongside for years—if they could just turn on them within the blink of an eye, how could they be safe anywhere in the galaxy?  Imagine the poisonous lies they had to swallow, had to bite back rebuttals against, any time anyone talked shit about their Order, crowed about the glorious Empire and its Emperor, the man who had orchestrated the murder of their people.  Imagine knowing the truth, the horror and destruction, and not being able to speak about it.  Being utterly alone in a galaxy that was once filled with bright lights, lights that in a single horrible moment were snuffed out en masse, a tear in the Force so horrible it’s still reverberating years later.

And then there are the kids born after Order 66, who come into an openly hostile galaxy without any knowledge of the Force, who don’t even know what they are, who have no context for the strange things they just “know” and can do.  The ones that won’t have a supportive community of people like them to help them train and manage their abilities, who will never have that because Palpatine didn’t just wipe out the Jedi, he killed the Nightsisters, neutered the Guardians of the Whills, had the Lasat mass disintegrated, got rid of any other Force discipline besides his own, practically erased all knowledge and memory of them, to consolidate his power.  These kids won’t understand why they get weird feelings, why they’re so oddly lucky, why things move and shake around them when they’re emotional.  They haven’t been taught to be mindful, to be disciplined, to guard themselves against the whispers of the Dark Side.  They’re fidgety, inattentive, impatient, and full of anger.  (Ezra, Leia, Luke.)  The lucky ones can hide their abilities just long enough to escape notice.  The unlucky ones get captured and tortured and experimented on, harvested, turned and then sicced back on people just like them like rabid dogs.

And I live for it when the survivors and the new generation manage to come together, kindred souls drawn to each other by fate and the will of the Force.  Tiny flickering candles of Light finding each other again, gathering strength together, sparking hope wherever they are just by being who they are.  Stumbling awkwardly through half-remembered lessons, reconnecting with their pasts and gaining new futures.  Trying to survive together under a regime that is actively hunting them down and trying to kill them, for who they are, for what they are, for what they remember and know, for the threat they represent against Palpatine’s stranglehold on Force power.  Everything the children of the Force are taught puts them in more danger, everything the survivors manage to teach and pass on paints a bigger target on their backs.

But Jedi can’t not get involved.  The Force itself calls them back into the fight, calls them to inspire hope in the hopeless, to rise up and fight against evil, hold the Darkness back.  Calls them back to themselves, to take up the mantle of Jedi again and stand firm as the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.  And when the Jedi come out of the shadows, rebels line up behind them, emboldened to take up arms.  The whole Alliance adopts the language of the Jedi (”May the Force be with you.”) and even when their champions fall or go missing they carry on, a movement started and led and encouraged by Jedi (Ahsoka as Fulcrum, Kanan and Ezra, Luke Skywalker) until they topple the Emperor and avenge the dead culture they pay honor to at last.  And young Force Sensitives and Jedi survivors can finally come out of hiding and be safe, rebuild what was lost, come home.

Just… Rebellion Era Jedi, man. 😭

[alexaloraetheris]

Reasons I believe my friend is secretly some kind of deity

1) First time we spoke was a week after the beggining of freshman year she summed up my entire character and most of the events of my life Sherlock style. I asked her how the hell she knew all that. She just shrugged and said she figured out our entire class already.

2) The one time we had religion class instead of ethics she listened to the teacher for a few minutes, laughed and told me:

“Humans have wished to be gods so much they’ve forgotten they have to ability to create them. Imagination has truly suffered from this ‘monotheism’ stuff.”

I was confused and asked her if she was an atheist. She rolled her eyes and said:

“Oh I believe in god alright. I just don’t think the bastard deserves to be worshipped.”

3) Out of nowhere she gave me this advice:

“The only truth a liar ever told was that lies weren’t going to save you. Don’t become the liar who has to pass that wisdom on, because they speak from experience.”

4) To this day, she has one of those old-timey phones with buttons she only uses to ocassionally call someone. When I asked her why she never got a smartphone she got pouty:

“I hate social media. On Facebook they talk a lot but never say anything. If I wanted to listen to people moan about their problems and ask for help they don’t expect I’d listen to their prayers.” (Notice the choice of words)

5) I noticed she was stiff and I offered her a massage since I’m really good at it but when i started kneading her back I swear to this day those were not muscles I felt. I asked her what she did to turn her muscles into rocks covered with a thin layer of skin and she kinda froze then shrugged and said she was just really, really stiff. My hands hurt after ten minutes when I can usually go for an hour. Next time I offered she seemed surprised and laughed. She still has rocks for muscles.

6) We were having a debate over the way neural pathways are formed (I study biology and she forensics) and I jokingly asked if I could have her brain for study when she dies. She laughed.

“Sure, if you find a way to kill me you can have it. I’m actually curious what you’re gonna find.”

7) One time she was tired and miserable and I tried to comfort her. We both have really dark sense of humor so I told her she could scare the dead out of their graves with that glare. She told me the dead can’t come back and I rolled my eyes and said 'obviously’ but she continued:

“When you die you descend to the underworld with nothing to lose. To keep you, they give you something to lose. When you want to return, they will demand it back. That’s why nobody ever leaves. The only way out is to never enter.”

8) One day she just came up to me with a disappointed look on her face. When I asked her what was wrong she was quiet for a few seconds and then just told me:

“Betrayals committed in good intentions are still damning. Just… keep that in mind.” Then she left and didn’t speak to me for three days. I still don’t know what she meant but even three years later I haven’t forgotten it.

9) We were casually sitting on a bench when, out of nowhere, she asked me: “Is it just me or have humans gotten dumber? Or have they always been this stupid and I just haven’t been paying attention?”

10) She asked me if I ever wondered what it was like to die. I said no but told her I would tell her when I found out. I meant it as a ghost joke but she smiled at me and said:

“Great. I’ll wait for you to come back. Maybe you’ll even remember me.”

In conclusion, she is some kind of low-key god and she lost her faith in humanity even before we lost our faith in her but she’s stuck with us because immortality is a bitch.

P.S. I just remembered her name is a variation on 'Eve’. Maybe I should reconsider my atheist status?!

UPDATE (Jan 9, 2019): Since people liked this so much I’m making it a thing. All I have about Eve can be found under #god goes to college

[elierlick]

This 1983 quote from Andrea Dworkin on right-wing women denouncing lesbians sounds eerily familiar in the context of anti-trans backlash.

[mybeingthere]

Just because I love Edward Gorey…..

A Chronological Short-Title Edward Gorey Bibliography

Prepared by Edward Bradford

This bibliography, arranged in the order of first appearance, provides the publisher and the year of the first edition of each work. Subsequent printings by the same publisher are omitted. Reprints or reissues by different publishers and their dates of issue follow immediately after the original listing. Editions published outside the United States are not included. Titles issued in other than book form, excluding calendars, are so indicated.

https://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/…/edward-gorey…